Tuesday night was another swim meet for Rachel. We had to travel to Pigeon Forge to compete against Gatlinburg. Rachel started out the meet with the 100m individual medley. There were only 2 competitors in the race: Rachel and her teammate, Amy. Rachel did so good in this event! She won 1st place and took over 10 seconds off her previous best time! And let me try to explain just how much she has improved in this event since the 1st meet. The first meet Rachel swam against Amy and Amy beat Rachel by about a full length of the pool. A couple of weeks ago Rachel swam against Amy again, and Rachel actually had a good lead after the first two laps (butterfly and backstroke), but then Amy caught her and passed her on the breast stroke lap. Amy ended up winning by about 3 seconds. Rachel's breast stroke is not near as good as her other three strokes. But she's been working on it. Now fast forward to Tuesday night. Rachel gets a good lead on the 1st lap (butterfly) and then continues and extends her lead during the 2nd lap (backstroke). She is able to keep her lead during the 3rd lap (breast stroke) and then finished strong with the freestyle. She won and ended up improving her time by over 10 seconds!!! And she has gone from getting beat by Amy by about a full length of the pool, to now beating Amy by about 12 seconds! What an improvement!!!
Rachel's 2nd event of the night was the 25m freestyle. She ended up winning 3rd, but didn't swim her best. Honestly, she was worn out from all the warm-ups before the meet even started. They swam over 10 laps of warmups, and then swam several half lengths of the pool. Then Rachel swam her 100m IM. As soon as she was finished with the 100m IM, it was time for her to get back in line for the 25m freestyle. She didn't have much time to rest. So I guess she did pretty well to win 3rd, although we know she can actually swim a few seconds faster.
The third event for Rachel was as part of the medley relay team. This time Rachel was swimming the butterfly portion of the relay. She dove in, came up, and swam a stroke or two of freestyle before remembering she was supposed to be swimming the butterfly! So unfortunately, the relay team was disqualified. And what's really bad is that our relay team was the only one in the event, so all we had to do was finish without being DQ'd and we would win 1st place! Oh well, live and learn! I think Rachel has learned that she's got to focus on what she's doing!!! She has done the freestyle leg of the relay in all of the previous medley relays, but that's not excuse for not remembering she's supposed to be doing the butterfly!
Rachel's 4th and final event of the night was as the anchor leg of the freestyle relay team. Again, our team was the only one in the event. Our girls did well, and actually took about 12 seconds off their previous time!
So for the evening, Rachel won 1st place in the 100m IM, 1st place in the freestyle relay, 3rd place in the 25m freestyle, and then was DQ'd in the medley relay. Not too bad!
Rachel has really improved in just a short time. She seems to be a pretty natural swimmer. And the good thing is that if she decides to swim again next year, she'll still get to swim in the 8 & under division!!!
Rachel getting ready for the anchor leg of the freestyle relay
Rachel diving in to swim the final leg of the freestyle relay
Rachel with her friend & teammate Logan
Rachel & Katelyn
Rachel waiting to dive in for the butterfly leg of the medley relay
0 comments:
Post a Comment